However, occasionally a Local Ordinary will do something so far beyond the pale that to not point it out would be akin to a sin of omission. Regrettably, this happened at our parish, St. Raphael’s in Niagara Falls, New York, at the hands of Buffalo bishop, Michael Fisher.
On October 3, 2023, the aforementioned bishop came to our relatively small church to celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation for my twins and thirty other young believers from two other parishes. It was literally standing room only; and as always with confirmations, it was a moving ceremony.
However, the following Sunday, our pastor—who was new to our parish and in his first term as a pastor at any parish—said that the bishop, during his brief visit to St. Raphael’s, decreed that our church needed a paint job.
Neither he nor the bishop were wrong: our church, which already suffered from being designed as one of those post-Vatican II washing-machine agitators/floppy beach hat architectural disasters, had been painted a bright lime green.
Our former pastor, who had spent 15 years at St. Raphael’s and was beloved by all—especially for his being an excellent confessor and let’s-keep-this-brief-and-to-the-point homilist—had saved as much money as he could by not painting the interior. St. Raphael’s, sadly, was ugly, inside and out.
But the bishop had spoken: it needed a fresh coat of paint.
Our new—and very young—pastor quickly found a painter for the entire interior. It would cost each family $250. Which, in Niagara Falls dollars, is a lot of money. This was in addition to the weekly tithes, insurance premiums, and the extra heating-bill collection.
In great news, the paint job was done quickly and very well: it was stunning, refreshing, and long overdue.
But almost as soon as it was completed, rumors began that our church was on the chopping block to be shuttered, along with at least two other churches in Niagara Falls. In February of this year, Bishop Fisher said the final Mass at St. Raphael’s, and the building was sold to Baptists. Or, as no less an authority than St. Robert Bellarmine would call them, “heretics.”
The problem here is obvious: it appears that to raise the value of the sale of St. Raphael’s, Bishop Fisher wanted it painted—not unlike a New York City landlord who paints an apartment before raising the rent and putting it on the market.
And he got his wish.
Despite St. Raphael’s being the last parish in Niagara Falls that the faithful could actually walk to, as well as being the only church in the North End of the city, it was summarily closed and sold.
This, of course, shattered our pastor, who, in a gut-wrenching and tear-jerking speech to us said he felt he “had failed us, and misled us.” While it is always somewhat reassuring to witness a priest show that he is indeed one of us, it was also heartbreaking.
But we had all been hoodwinked: Bishop Fisher, who has absolutely no ties to any part of Western New York—indeed, his ecclesiastical career was based in Washington, D.C., under former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, and had never reached past the Mason-Dixon Line—had acted in bad faith.
He took advantage of a young pastor’s obedience and the people of St. Raphael’s parish by having us pay for a paint job he capriciously and arbitrarily ordered, only to close and sell the very same church he had visited exactly twice: once to confirm the faithful (and complain to the pastor) and once to shut it down.
The Diocese of Buffalo went bankrupt in 2020.
That same year, our Christ the King Seminary—which had been rocked by its own in-house sex scandal—was shuttered. Even the Vincentian Fathers, who run Niagara University and are age-old experts in turning around seminaries, were stymied.
In a sense, these were portents of what was to happen throughout the rest of the diocese: closing churches under the guise of having to pay out a nearly endless stream of abuse reparations.
That—all that—to the side: I’m not sure how importing a bishop with no knowledge of Buffalo is supposed to “fix” a problem he cannot begin to understand. While this is not unique to Buffalo, unfortunately, we have been burdened by a bishop who acts more like a medieval monarch than a servant leader.
His high-handed tactics have recently been called out, and even the Vatican is at least acknowledging the voices of parishioners in those churches in this diocese that are struggling to stay open despite the bishop’s strong-arm/my-way-or-the-highway decretals.
While I do not envy any bishop the job entrusted to him—which now includes coming up with millions of dollars to pay for sex-abuse scandals he inherited (and did not create)—someone should point out to these esteemed churchmen that constantly closing churches is what anyone who has studied at Yale School of Management would call a “non-sustainable business model.”
There are a limited number of churches that can be closed (and sold). No one seems to have thought through the possibility that there are not enough churches to sell.
When it was announced that St. Raphael’s would close for certain, I asked our pastor if we would be refunded our extra donation of $250 for the paint job that we barely got to enjoy. I was joking in a time of misery, of course.
But last month, out of nowhere, the residents of New York State received an unexpected “rebate check” from our rather tiresome governor, Kathy Hochul—with her signature seemingly enlarged so we don’t forget whose largesse we are indebted to.
The least Bishop Fisher could do is send the heartbroken and soul-searching former parishioners of St. Raphael’s our money back—since it’s certain that we are not getting our church back.